MovieSorter

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We Are Marshall
Really Great 66 Points 2006

Arguably the best football movie ever, We Are Marshall is about much more than sports. Don’t shy away because 75 people – including dozens of collegiate football players – died in the horrific plane crash that forms its centerpiece. The movie is about what led up to the tragedy and mostly abo…

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WikChip Video Great football movie about more than ...
Closed Season
Great 66 Points 2012

Closed Season’s home-front Holocaust drama gets amplified by delving into some serious sexual intrigue. Result? A great movie, one that’s titled Ende der Schonzeit in its native Germany. Google translates that as “End of the grace period”. Hmm, besser in Deutsch.

A near feudal German…

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WikChip Image "I need you to impregnate my wife here."
The Secret in T...
Really Great 66 Points 2010

More than your ordinary police procedural, this affecting Argentine import includes a decidedly grown-up office romance & insight into Perón’s Argentina. Veteran Law & Order director Juan José Campanella deserves his Best Foreign Language Oscar for an &1 if nothing else.1

His film’s two…

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WikChip Video Argentine Law & Order Writ Large
Lovelace
Very Good 66 Points 2013

Linda Lovelace gets her story told her way, finally. While the whole truth doesn’t fully out, the truthyness of her bizarre celebrity does, making Lovelace a worthwhile 90 minute investment for the curious.

Her’s is the story of a pimp as much as a porn actress. A scumbag named Chuck Trayn…

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WikChip Image Here's where she starts to get screwed.
Muscle Shoals
Perfect 66 Points 2013

The Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James and Percy Sledge did their best work in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd added the piano intro to Freebird while there. This Muscle Shoals documentary covers all that rocking glory, with Bono commenta…

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WikChip Video Keef vouches for Muscle Shoals magic
Annie Hall
Great 66 Points 1977

It hasn’t aged well, this Seventies icon. Maybe because Woody Allen self-parodied himself in real life, or Left Wing Manhattan neurotics are no longer exotic characters, or topical gags don’t have much shelf life. “La-dee-da, la-dee-da.” Sure it’s still a benchmark movie. The Academy doesn’t …

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WikChip Video Trailer for a Best Picture winner
Jersey Boys
Very Good 66 Points 2014

This long movie is no longer than the smash stage show it brings to the Silver Screen. It just feels like it. Clint Eastwood apparently couldn’t come up with a way to transform the show for the screen, with middling results. I can’t think of a way either, but that doesn’t change the underwhelm…

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WikChip Video Jersey Boys @Tonys: This U can dance 2
Jimi Hendrix: H...
Great 66 Points 2013

“Are you experienced?” Rock fans of a certain age recognize that bold question as cover for “Do you dig Jimi Hendrix?” Ya dig. For those of us in that cohort and for rock and blues fans of all ages, Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ is a 90 minute documentary well worth viewing, turned up …

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WikChip Video Hendrix ⏩ Wild Thing ⏩ Monterey Pop
Get on Up
Really Great 66 Points 2014

Get on Up joins the pantheon of great rock biopics, memorializing James Brown as a seminal rockstar whose power, pomp and circumstances paved the way for the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sly & the Family Stone, hip-hop and every other form of funkable & funkadelic music. Get on Up gets on…

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WikChip Video James Brown ✫ Please, Please, Pleas...
The Long Goodbye
OK 66 Points 1973

More an oddball curiosity than a successful movie, The Long Goodbye dropped a Forties private-eye story into the Seventies. Robert Altman used that juxtaposition to show how times had changed in the twenty years since the Raymond Chandler novel on which the movie is based came out. That it does…

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WikChip Image Altman directs van Pallandt & Gould